Dallas Mavericks Blog

Four in the morning: The alarm clock’s warning can’t help the bench during a busy stretch

Here’s our four insights into the Mavericks’ 110-96 loss to Denver Monday night.

Time not on his side: Did anybody else notice the irony in Samuel Dalembert’s analysis of the first home loss of the season? “It was a wake-up call for us,” he said. Hmmm. Maybe not the wording some of us would have chosen considering that Dalembert overslept Monday morning and missed the team’s shootaround. For that infraction, he was benched for the start of the game and didn’t enter until the start of the second quarter. DeJuan Blair started and Bernard James got in the game before Dalembert. Don’t expect any lingering problems for Dalembert. As long as he remembers to set his personal wake-up call moving forward.

Schedule taking a toll: The Mavericks play 18 games before November is over and are in the midst of a 10-game, 16-day stretch. There simply isn’t enough time in the schedule right now to get in good, hard practice sessions and that may be sapping the Mavericks in terms of energy and the ability to fine tune things. “It’s a murderous stretch of schedule because of the frequency of games,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “We can’t let a busy schedule influence the mental edge we have to bring the game.” The fact is that the Mavericks looked sluggish against Denver, which admittedly is a fast team that can make anybody look slow at times. But this can’t become a trend.

A little help here, please: The Mavericks sure would like to see some support troops show up soon. It probably won’t happen. Brandan Wright doesn’t appear to be ready to return before December and Devin Harris is further away than that, maybe middle of the month. The Mavericks’ bench has been average at best in recent games and that’s got to change. They were outscored by 20 points Monday by the Nuggets’ reserves. It didn’t help that Dalembert was put on the bench and Blair started. But still, Vince Carter needs to hit a hot streak. He shot 3-of-13 against the Nuggets and missed all four of his 3-pointers. That’s unlike him and the guess is that he’ll perk at some point. But the Mavericks need him immediately, if not sooner.

The defense rests: The Mavericks have given up 50-percent shooting or more in five of their last seven games. Given that, it’s a testament to their offensive abilities that they are 4-3 in that stretch. The Nuggets missed four of their first six shots. They then went 10-of-11 to finish the first quarter and take a 32-27 lead. In reality, they never looked back because they were able to shoot 55 percent for the game and outrebound the Mavericks. Until the Mavericks get serious about playing some better defense, it’s going to be difficult to rely on them to string together very many strong outings.

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